iMac late 2015 Retina - Problems

iMac Retina 5K 27” Late 2015

Sierra 10.12.3

Processor 3.2 GHz Intel Core i5

Memory 32 GB 1867 MHz DDR3

Graphics AMD Radeon R9 M380 2048 MB

Hardware Steps taken so far:

- Replaced ram with 32GB Crucial ram

- Logic board replaced by apple (months of hassle to get this done)

- Problems still happen with just original apple ram installed

Software steps taken so far:

- Reset SMC (daily)

- Reset PRAM (daily)

- Reinstalled OS (multiple versions, complete usb clean install, everything)

- Ran Hardware Test (no problems)

- Ran Disk Utility > First Aid (no problems reported)

- Ran in safe mode * see below

- Ran with new user ** see below

- Shut down and removed unused / old software and removed cache

- Disconnected external drives and cables

- Disabled start-up / login programs

- Separated this iMac to its own Wi-Fi connection

- All software running latest versions

- Tried most options suggested on this and other forums

- Reset spotlight to index drive many times

- Tried turning off reduce transparency, motion default display etc.

- Followed software advice to speed up Adobe software

- Validated fonts

- Obviously using purchased and registered software

Main problems:

- iMac has been slow since purchase, slower than my 2011 27” with 16GB

- Occasional complete full screen artefacts when closing.

- Often apps crashing

- Often apps not opening

- Complete screen freeze, not able to click / move anything - apart from mouse curser, even the clock stops

- All adobe cc 2017 software crashes often - Error 25

- Finder crashing and not finding files

- Occasional black / red or green windows when watching video / InDesign documents

- Spotlight has given a privacy list error (null) when adding and removing drive - when trying to reindex

- word docs could not be saved / insufficient memory

Error codes seen:

- Spotlight has given a privacy list error (null)

- image capture error -9934. (-9934) null

- GPU Reset - RCS Ring appears Hung

- GPU Reset tailspin unknownCTX

HI,

I have a 12 month old iMac (inc AppleCare) The problems seem to be ever changing, one problem will ease off and then a brand new one will crop up, daily, the problems listed above are constant, the Mac has been in to an apple repair centre twice (left for 2 weeks) with no errors found - even though I have videos, SS, crash reports etc, nothing is getting fixed.

* Safe mode - the computer has huge lag in safe mode - SOMETIMES.

** New user did work, the computer was vastly improved and even display colours seemed clearer, good white point etc - this lasted maybe a day then back to normal problems.

Having owned Apple Macs for nearly 30 years, in a publishing environment, constant daily use as an advanced user I am stuck! 30 years, 20 Macs and can’t remember ever having an issue for 29 years, until this machine, I spend 30% of my time trying to fix and work with it.

Latest Problems:

I have performed a complete clean install, only installed adobe cc 17 and files required to work, this problem is new:

Open - Finder - Applications - often this will close the finder window and all desktop icons / folders will disappear and come back, you can look at all other folders in finder apart from applications, then 10 mins later its fine.

As above - when viewing applications folder, ‘opened recently view' app icons will swap around - i.e. word will show excel icon, utilities folder will show InDesign icon.

New today, when I save an image or file from an open app to desktop it doesn’t show, but if I then go to the finder window - all files and click on the saved doc or picture it will suddenly appear on desktop, I then restarted to see if that helped, it has so far but when going to save, the auto saved folder has changed from desktop to a folder called D21D4194-9c7c-409C-B115-5410676A1EEEE?

Most Etrechecks show an excellent performance rating of approx 1:30.

Funnily enough (well, not really) a new problem for the first time whilst opening the etrecheck box to grab txt, as the window opened it was completely 'red', once fully opened it was fine, also the diagnostics information is missing multiple crashes.

Sorry for the extensive post, just wondering if any one has any ideas at all….

Entrecheck Encl ( I backup now using Drive, but run this manually, problem was there before using any backup software).

EtreCheck version: 3.1.5 (343)

Report generated 2017-03-14 23:55:38

Download EtreCheck from https://etrecheck.com

Runtime 1:28

Performance: Excellent

Click the [Support] links for help with non-Apple products.

Click the [Details] links for more information about that line.

Problem: Other problem

Hardware Information:ⓘ

iMac (Retina 5K, 27-inch, Late 2015)

[Technical Specifications] - [User Guide] - [Warranty & Service]

iMac - model: iMac17,1

1 3.2 GHz Intel Core i5 (i5-6500) CPU: 4-core

32 GB RAM Upgradeable - [Instructions]

BANK 0/DIMM0

8 GB DDR3 1867 MHz ok

BANK 0/DIMM1

8 GB DDR3 1867 MHz ok

BANK 1/DIMM0

8 GB DDR3 1867 MHz ok

BANK 1/DIMM1

8 GB DDR3 1867 MHz ok

Bluetooth: Good - Handoff/Airdrop2 supported

Wireless: en1: 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac

Video Information:ⓘ

AMD Radeon R9 M380 - VRAM: 2048 MB

iMac 5120 x 2880

System Software:ⓘ

macOS Sierra 10.12.3 (16D32) - Time since boot: about one hour

Disk Information:ⓘ

APPLE HDD ST1000DM003 disk0 : (1 TB) (Rotational)

[Show SMART report]

EFI (disk0s1) <not mounted> : 210 MB

iMac 27" (disk0s2) / [Startup]: 999.35 GB (812.55 GB free)

Recovery HD (disk0s3) <not mounted> [Recovery]: 650 MB

USB Information:ⓘ

Broadcom Corp. Bluetooth USB Host Controller

Apple Inc. FaceTime HD Camera (Built-in)

Thunderbolt Information:ⓘ

Apple Inc. thunderbolt_bus

Gatekeeper:ⓘ

Mac App Store and identified developer

System Launch Agents:ⓘ

[not loaded] 7 Apple tasks

[loaded] 181 Apple tasks

[running] 92 Apple tasks

System Launch Daemons:ⓘ

[not loaded] 42 Apple tasks

[loaded] 168 Apple tasks

[running] 100 Apple tasks

Launch Agents:ⓘ

[not loaded] com.adobe.AAM.Updater-1.0.plist (2017-01-23) [Support]

[running] com.adobe.AdobeCreativeCloud.plist (2017-01-23) [Support]

Launch Daemons:ⓘ

[loaded] com.adobe.ARMDC.Communicator.plist (2017-01-23) [Support]

[loaded] com.adobe.ARMDC.SMJobBlessHelper.plist (2017-01-23) [Support]

[running] com.adobe.adobeupdatedaemon.plist (2017-01-23) [Support]

[running] com.adobe.agsservice.plist (2017-03-11) [Support]

[loaded] com.adobe.fpsaud.plist (2017-01-30) [Support]

[loaded] com.apple.installer.osmessagetracing.plist (2017-01-13)

[running] com.prosoftnet.idrivedaemon.plist (2017-02-26) [Support]

[loaded] com.prosoftnet.idsyncdaemon.plist (2017-02-26) [Support]

[running] com.prosoftnet.idwifimanager.plist (2017-02-26) [Support]

User Launch Agents:ⓘ

[loaded] com.adobe.AAM.Updater-1.0.plist (2017-01-23) [Support]

[loaded] com.google.keystone.agent.plist (2017-01-14) [Support]

[running] com.spotify.webhelper.plist (2017-03-06) [Support]

Internet Plug-ins:ⓘ

AdobePDFViewerNPAPI: 15.023.20056 - SDK 10.11 (2017-02-28) [Support]

FlashPlayer-10.6: 24.0.0.221 - SDK 10.9 (2017-03-02) [Support]

AdobePDFViewer: 15.023.20056 - SDK 10.11 (2017-02-28) [Support]

QuickTime Plugin: 7.7.3 (2017-01-13)

Flash Player: 24.0.0.221 - SDK 10.9 (2017-03-02) Outdated! Update

AdobeAAMDetect: 3.0.0.0 - SDK 10.9 (2017-01-23) [Support]

3rd Party Preference Panes:ⓘ

None

Time Machine:ⓘ

Time Machine not configured!

Top Processes by CPU:ⓘ

5% WindowServer

3% kernel_task

2% Safari

2% fontd(2)

1% com.apple.PerformanceAnalysis.animationperfd

Top Processes by Memory:ⓘ

1.58 GB kernel_task

623 MB com.apple.WebKit.WebContent(6)

524 MB Finder

426 MB Mail

360 MB Microsoft Word

Virtual Memory Information:ⓘ

26.20 GB Available RAM

19.12 GB Free RAM

5.80 GB Used RAM

7.08 GB Cached files

0 B Swap Used

Diagnostics Information:ⓘ

Mar 14, 2017, 10:24:44 PM Self test - passed

Mar 14, 2017, 10:23:53 PM ~/Library/Logs/DiagnosticReports/CEPHtmlEngine_2017-03-14-222353_[redacted].cra sh

com.adobe.cep.CEPHtmlEngine - /Applications/Adobe Photoshop CC 2017/Adobe Photoshop CC 2017.app/Contents/MacOS/CEPHtmlEngine.app/Contents/MacOS/CEPHtmlEngine

Mar 14, 2017, 08:54:11 PM ~/Library/Logs/DiagnosticReports/iTunes_2017-03-14-205411_[redacted].crash

com.apple.iTunes - /Applications/iTunes.app/Contents/MacOS/iTunes

Mar 12, 2017, 05:46:19 PM ~/Library/Logs/DiagnosticReports/cloudd_2017-03-12-174619_[redacted].crash

/System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/CloudKitDaemon.framework/Support/cloudd